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Creating IRPs for Lower-Level Drivers

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To allocate an IRP for an asynchronous request, which will be processed in an arbitrary thread context by lower drivers, a DispatchReadWrite routine can call one of the following support routines:

IoAllocateIrp, which allocates an IRP and a number of zero-initialized I/O stack locations

The dispatch routine must set up the next-lower driver's I/O stack location for the newly allocated IRP, usually by copying (possibly modified) information from its own stack location in the original IRP. If a higher-level driver allocates an I/O stack location of its own for a newly-allocated IRP, the dispatch routine can set up per-request context information there for the IoCompletion routine to use.

When an IoCompletion routine is called for such an IRP, it can check the I/O status block, and if necessary (or possible) set up the next-lower driver's I/O stack location in the IRP again and retry the request or reuse it. However, the IoCompletion routine has no local context storage for itself in the IRP, so the driver must maintain context about the original request elsewhere in resident memory.

IoMakeAssociatedIrp, which allocates an IRP and a number of zero-initialized I/O stack locations, and associates the IRP with a master IRP.

Any highest-level driver that calls IoMakeAssociatedIrp to create IRPs for lower drivers can return control to the I/O manager after sending its associated IRPs on and calling IoMarkIrpPending for the original, master IRP. A highest-level driver can rely on the I/O manager to complete the master IRP when all associated IRPs have been completed by lower drivers.

Drivers seldom set an IoCompletion routine for an associated IRP. If a highest-level driver calls IoSetCompletionRoutine for an associated IRP it creates, the I/O manager does not complete the master IRP if the driver returns STATUS_MORE_PROCESSING_REQUIRED from its IoCompletion routine. In these circumstances, the driver's IoCompletion routine must explicitly complete the master IRP with IoCompleteRequest.

The dispatch routine must call IoMarkIrpPending with the original IRP, but not with any driver-allocated IRPs because the IoCompletion routine will free them.

If the dispatch routine is allocating IRPs for partial transfers and the underlying device driver might control a removable-media device, the dispatch routine must set up the thread context in its newly allocated IRPs from the value at Tail.Overlay.Thread in the original IRP.

An underlying driver for a removable-media device might call IoSetHardErrorOrVerifyDevice, which references the pointer at Irp->Tail.Overlay.Thread, for a driver-allocated IRP. If the driver calls this support routine, the file system driver can send a dialog box to the appropriate user thread that prompts the user to cancel, retry, or fail an operation that the driver could not satisfy. See Supporting Removable Media for more information.

Dispatch routines must return STATUS_PENDING after sending all driver-allocated IRPs on to lower drivers.

A driver's IoCompletion routine should free all driver-allocated IRPs with IoFreeIrp before it calls IoCompleteRequest for the original IRP. When it completes the original IRP, the IoCompletion routine must free all driver-allocated IRPs before it returns control.

Each higher-level driver sets up any driver-allocated (and reused) IRPs for lower drivers in such a way that it is immaterial to the underlying device driver whether a given request comes from an intermediate driver or originates from any other source, such as a file system or user-mode application.

Highest-level drivers can call IoMakeAssociatedIrp to allocate IRPs and set them up for a chain of lower drivers. The I/O manager automatically completes the original IRP when all its associated IRPs have been completed, as long as the driver does not call IoSetCompletionRoutine with the original IRP or with any of the associated IRPs it allocates. Highest-level drivers must not, however, allocate associated IRPs for any IRP that requests a buffered I/O operation.

An intermediate-level driver cannot allocate IRPs for lower-level drivers by calling IoMakeAssociatedIrp. Any IRP an intermediate driver receives might already be an associated IRP, and a driver cannot associate another IRP with such an IRP.

By a driver-created thread to build IRPs for read or write requests, because such a thread can wait in a nonarbitrary thread context (its own) on a dispatcher object, such as a driver-initialized Event passed to IoBuildSynchronousFsdRequest

In the system thread context during initialization or while unloading

To build IRPs for inherently synchronous operations, such as create, flush, shutdown, close, and device control requests

However, a driver is more likely to call IoBuildDeviceIoControlRequest to allocate device control IRPs than IoBuildSynchronousFsdRequest.

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